Little Flower Farm: June 2021

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

June Harvest Scenes

purple plum radishes on harvest day

bringing home the broccoli

Week 5 Farm-Share

It doesn't matter where you've farmed or for how long. Just the tousle with a piece of land makes for an intimacy that stays with you- bone deep. We were visiting the Driftless Region during a whirl-wind day-long road trip last Friday. We were town for the wedding of two of our Amish friends. Took the opportunity to look in on the old farm. The 20 acres of pasture was plowed under for soybeans. The lilacs and wild raspberry bushes were bulldozed for a more streamlined street-side appearance. The house, batted about by 8 years of Hillpoint wind needs refinishing, the barn a new coat of paint. But the old cemetery is still there. Folks still bring flags and flowers to decorate the graves. The view still knocks the stuff out you, and the feeling of the land there is unmistakably familiar, like the bread-doughy outstreched arms of a smiling Grandmother.

The expanded Little Flower Farm crew in Hillpoint 2021

My Grandma used to spend her summers at her grandparents' farm in Arcadia, WI, just 2 hours Northwest of our old farm in Hillpoint. The way she spoke of that place, and of the hills surrounding the old farmhouse, the front porch, the dairy barn...gave me the impression that heaven for her, was that little piece of land in Arcadia. She said something once that has always stuck with me:

Jane (Erickson) Vessel with Uncle
on the Arcadia farm

"We never thought we were anything special." She said it with a simplicity that bespoke both humility and the certainty that those people, that place, that time, were in reality, immensely special and eternally important. The farm was "home" to her in a way that her other homes had not been. It had given her a sense of having once belonged to special place...It doesn't matter where you've farmed or for how long. Just the tousle with a piece of land makes for an intimacy that stays with you- bone deep... One of her last wishes on this earth was to come see our farm. I like to think she has a better view of it now, than she would have from her wheelchair.

5 minutes from our old farm, there is a chapel that sits in the middle of a small cemetery overlooking the hills and valleys. It is dedicated to Our Lady of the Fields.

O Blessed Lady of the Fields, who loved the land of thy native Galilee, who watched the Tiller of the Earth and Shepherd of the Flock go out and return from Nazareth, who lived with and loved the rural folk of the village, look down graciously upon the fields and pastures of this, thy adopted land. Make our homes sanctuaries of Christ as was thy home. Make our fields fertile and abundant in the harvest. Help us understand more fully the dignity of our toil and the merit it requires when offered through thee to Thy Divine Son, Jesus Christ, Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen

Prayer Source: National Catholic Rural Life Conference, 1920-1960

The Way to Go

A Thirteenth Century Farmer Makes His Will

“At that time wills had to be written in Latin, and Reginald Labbe (d. 1293) could neither write nor read, much less speak the Latin tongue. So to the parish clerk he betook himself.

The Clerk: How much money have you to leave?

LABBE: Not one penny. I have a cow and a calf, two sheep, three lambs, as many hens, a bushel and half of wheat, a seam and a half of fodder, a seam of barley, another of mixed grain, and one halfpenny-worth of salt. Besides these, I own, in clothes, a tabard, a tunic, and a hood; my household goods are a rug, a bolster, two sheets, a brass dish, and a trivet.

The Clerk: You’re well off. How do you wish to leave these things? And pray remember that, as you have no money, some of them must be sold to defray expenses.

LABBE: What do you reckon they’re worth?

The Clerk: Thirty-three shillings and eightpence all told.

LABBE: And what will the expenses come to?

The Clerk: A penny to dig your grave and two-pence to toll the bell. Then there will be eightpence to prove this will, and six shillings for bread-and-cheese for your mourners. And, say, another crown for fees of other sorts.

LABBE: Those figures are beyond me. But when all is paid, I should like to make these bequests. A sheep to the church in Newton, and another to the altar-and-fabric fund at Oakwood. To my wife, Ida, or rather, to Ida my widow, one-half of my cow, and to Thomas Fitz-Norreys a quarter of my calf.

The Clerk: Is that all?

Reginald LABBE: I can’t think of anything more.

The Clerk: That will be sixpence for the making of the will, and three-pence more for the writing of it out.

Reginald: I can’t pay you now, but I will when I’m dead. The sheep are worth tenpence apiece-take one for your trouble.

The Clerk: That will do very well.

The Clerk then wrote it all down, and Reginald Labbe went home with peace in his mind, and a Latin will in his pocket.”

Eleanor Farjeon’s “The New Book of Days”

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Four Fine Fields

Harvest and Delivery Day

Greens Processing Crew in training

Bringing Buttercup in

Little Flower Farm Cheerleaders and Clean-up Crew

By the end of June the farm comes into it's own.

It becomes a patchwork quilt, a little piece of embroidery which we needle at each day, keeping busy with work which doesn't require us to lie, cheat, or steal.

(this is something which keeps us in good gratitude when heat waves, money troubles, or insects and their nibbling teeth press upon us most indecorously. )

View from the Brassica patch

Potato Field

The cabbages always surprise us- which is saying something for a matronly vegetable whose plumpness and spread is hard to miss...but just as we notice them starting to whirl their leaves into a centering vortex, the butterflies hatch and we are momentarily distracted, only to turn around at the last minute on harvest day to find they have headed up- business like- while we were tracking gossamer wings and imagining partaking in the diaphanous miracle of flight...off we trundle to kitchen with dirty feet to cook up our dinner with the cabbage beneath our arm. You can almost hear it murmur as you slice into it and toss flecks of its fresh leaves into the olive oil. "Enough daydreaming! You must eat, you know! This'll put some meat on yer bones! Ready you for the day in the field tomorrow! We scoop up spoonfuls of the stuff and eat it over rice. With each bite we become more like the hardier stuff that brassicas are made of, like children, who despite their protestations will inevitably resemble their mothers!

Bird's Eye view of the 4 fields of Little Flower Farm

Harmony Buttercrunch Lettuce

Four Fields comprise our farm- at least the veggie growing parts of it. If you sing while you weed you can finish several rows before you even realize you've already finished the beets.

"What did I have, said the fine old woman What did I have, this proud old woman did say I had four green fields, each one was a jewel But strangers came and tried to take them from me I had fine strong sons, who fought to save my jewels They fought and they died, and that was my grief said she Long time ago, said the fine old woman Long time ago, this proud old woman did say There was war and death, plundering and pillage My children starved, by mountain, valley and sea And their wailing cries, they shook the very heavens My four green fields ran red with their blood, said she What have I now, said the fine old woman What have I now, this proud old woman did say I have four green fields, one of them's in bondage In stranger's hands, that tried to take it from me But my sons had sons, as brave as were their fathers My fourth green field will bloom once again said she"

Irish Ballad "Four Fine Fields"